20th November 2009
Life's a Can of Worms!
You know what they say, "Life's a can of worms and once you've opened it the only way to get the worms back in is to get another can..."
Or, to put it another way...You start something relatively simple and one thing leads to another...(until you end up wishing you'd never started!
Take last Wednesday, for example. I decided the time had come to upgrade to faster broadband and the nice, helpful chap from my ISP was talking me through the modifications I needed to make to my router. I was then told to turn it off for 10 min and back on again and, hey presto, I'd be connected to the new faster service and all would be well...
If only life were that simple. The process didn't work and I was left without internet access, or email, for the next 24hrs,or so. I was off out, so I wasn't able to do anything about it until the next morning...I phoned the next day and couldn't get a reply, so I left a message... later that day we tried some more modifications...We ended up getting two other chaps involved and I ended up running round the house unplugging various connections and trying things in different sockets... I'm sure many of you will appreciate that, as cables are often run behind furniture, this also involved moving a sofa bed and a desk, squeezing my hand behind a cabinet and moving my sky box, video and DVD player off a shelf and onto the floor!! The only good thing to come out of all this, is that I found a bracelet that I lost two years ago!
It appears now that I may need a new router or, failing that, a BT engineer and maybe a builder (to partially dismantle a stone fireplace in order to get to the main phone socket!!)
So how do we react when things like this happen? That's the crucial thing. Do we rant and rave and blame someone? Do we bow to the inevitability of it all, reflecting that life is, after all, a can of worms and we "Should have known what would happen" (The 'Just my luck' syndrome) Or,do we shrug our shoulders and move on? Maybe even learning a lesson or two in the process?
I chose to reflect on two things here...The first is that,in the words of Viktor Frankl (Holocaust survivor)
"Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." So, we may not be able to control what happens to us, but we can control how we allow it to affect us.
And the second is, that we get what we focus on so, the more things go wrong, the more we expect things to go wrong, the more they will go wrong...
So try changing your attitude and see what happens!
Something else to think about, is that everything we do has a consequence, either for ourselves or others. All too often we don't consider what these consequences might be, but that is the subject of a whole other article... :-)
What Do Singing and Coaching Have in Common?
Apart from me, that is?
Yes, it's true! When I'm not working I can often be found singing in such diverse places as Cheltenham Racecourse and Penarth Pier!
I've recently returned from a Ladies Barbershop singing competition in Cheltenham, where our entry was "Swinging on a Star" One of my friends says she always thinks of it as the life coaching song - listen carefully to the lyrics...
" Life is what you make it, there you are. Make your choices, take your chances, you'll go far. So would you like to swing on a star...
...And be better off than you are,
Or would you rather be a mule??!!
So, how did we do in the competition? Well, let's just say we didn't come last!! (Not quite...) There were many possible reasons for this, and I won't bore you with the technical details, however, the interesting thing is that we didn't expect to win. In fact, I seem to recall someone saying, "As long as we don't come last..."
Now, singing is something I do when I'm not working, so I've never had my 'coaching hat' on at rehearsal, but it occurred to me that our 'goal' was "not to come last" and we achieved it!
The MD of another chorus, who did some work with us recently, told us that the only difference between us and some of the higher scoring choruses was "In here" (pointing at the head) Now one or two of our number pooh...poohed this, but I agree with him entirely for, in the words of Henry Ford, "If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right!"
Now I'm not saying that we don't need to work on our singing and presentation but, if we start out with the right beliefs and attitude, this becomes so much easier. Also any inner belief/attitude will come across (at an unconcious level) to audience and judges alike, and it will make a difference.
All good sportsmen/women are coached on their attitude and encouraged to believe they are the best. Visualisation excersises have been proven to improve the ability of astronauts and Olympic athletes alike, so maybe it's time I started working on the chorus...
Someone (I believe it was another coach) also suggested recently that singing can be used as a team-building excersise. Now, for those of us who have an aversion to the assault course type of team-building, I think this is a great idea! A good choir, or chorus, has to learn to work together, each performing their own part while making sure that what they are doing fits into the performance as a whole. This is very important as, if one section gets their part wrong, it not only interferes with the overall sound, but may also make it difficult for another section to fit their part in. And it's important that each section knows when their part should be louder, or softer, in relation to the others; in other words, each member of the team has to recognise when it's their chance to shine and when they should 'take a back seat'.
The whole choir/chorus also have to learn to follow direction from their Musical Director who, in turn, learns leadership and communication skills.
I'm sure the analogies are endless, but you get the picture.
So, there you have it, just some of the things that singing and coaching have in common. If you can think of any others, let me know...
More articles...coming soon
